Organizations including companies, businesses, institutions, and the like collect and generate a vast amount of data. The data may include documents, reports, video, music, social media postings, emails, medical records, customer transactions, financial records, and so forth.
Since data plays such a vital role in the functioning of an organization, it is important that there be copies of data such as backup copies in the event of a disaster. In addition to backup copies, organizations often make copies for other purposes such as for analytics, reporting, and testing.
An organization may wish to maintain the data including copies of the data for a certain period of time after their creation. In some cases, a retention period is mandated by law. The copies, if left unchecked, however, can cause an organization's storage costs to spiral out-of-control. Different copies may have varying degrees of importance and the importance can change with the passage of time. There is a need for improved systems and techniques that reflect these understandings when calculating final data retention dates in order to more efficiently manage data growth.
The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions. EMC, Data Domain, Data Domain Restorer, and Data Domain Boost are trademarks of EMC Corporation.